The best theories are only approximations of the truth. Systems of human invention eventually become outdated. That is why we need dissenters.
- The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. [Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Abigail Adams, 1787.]
- Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one’s country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former, because real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries. [Thomas Jefferson, Report on Spanish Convention, 1792.]
- We cannot play ostrich. Democracy just cannot flourish amid fear. Liberty cannot bloom amid hate. Justice cannot take root amid rage. America must get to work. In the chill climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing wind. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better. [Thurgood Marshall, Liberty Medal acceptance address, July 4, 1992]
- The commotions that have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I could not wish them less than they have. If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase. ‘Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietem servitutem.’ Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.” [Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles, 1786.]
Perhaps nothing is more strongly disapproved in national life — especially the national life of a wealthy and successful people — than dissent. Yet in every field, dissent is indispensable to progress. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson did not write that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism“, but we might conclude that he believed it from some of his other remarks, quoted above. In a classic work of intellectual history, Thomas Kuhn observed that scientific progress usually results from crisis and turmoil in established fields of science, begins as dissenting scientists (usually young ones) challenge established theories, proceeds through a period of bitter rejection by the “establishment” and ends with the emergence of new theories replacing the old. [Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962).] We see the same process in virtually every field of human endeavor, and yet time after time otherwise intelligent people fight furiously to preserve established methods that have fallen into crisis.
Sometimes, in our quest to reduce life to terms we can comprehend, or in an attempt to preserve personal or group privileges, we humans have tried to squelch diversity. Because of our particular nature as a social species, we developed a natural inclination to prefer conformity. Conformity has its place but sometimes people are inclined to suppress our differences solely for the sake of personal comfort. This has led to an unfortunate tendency toward unthinking suppression of dissent and unfamiliar lifestyles. The struggle against this has been a long one and the battles have been intense. For that reason, our narrative on this subject is rich.
Real
True Narratives
The narratives immediately below are especially compelling in the United States, whose form of government is republican/democratic, whose origins are those of political dissent and whose Constitution proclaims a formal commitment to the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
- Barry Hankins and Derek Davis, New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America (J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, 2002).
- Frank Lowenstein, Sheryl Lechner and Erik Bruun, eds., Voices of Protest: Documents of Courage and Dissent (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2007).
- Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).
- Robert B. Woods, ed., Vietnam and the American Political Tradition: The Politics of Dissent (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
- Bud Schultz, The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America (University of California Press, 2001).
- Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America (University of California Press, 1989).
- Barrows Dunham, Heroes and Heretics: A Social History of Dissent (Alfred A. Knopf, 1964).
- Timothy L. Wood, Wood, Agents of Wrath, Sowers of Discord: Authority and Dissent in Puritan Massachusetts, 1630-1655 (Routledge, 2005).
- Ellen Levine, Freedom's Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories (Putnam Juvenile, 1993).
- Joseph W. Esherick, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Andrew G. Walder, eds., China's Cultural Revolution as History (Stanford University Press), 2006).
- Chihua Wen, The Red Mirror: Children of China's Cultural Revolution (Westview Press, 1995).
- Aleksandr Iksaevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 (Harper Collins, 1974).
- Leona Toker, Return From the Archipelago: Narratives of Gulag Survivors (Indiana University Press, 2000).
- Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (Doubleday, 2003).
- Janusz Bardach and Kathleen Gleeson, Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag (University of California Press, 1998).
- Evgeniia Semenovna Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967).
- Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Knopf, 1963).
- Julia Alvarez, In the Time of Butterflies (Algonquin Books, 1994).
- Vibeke Schou Tjalve, Realist Strategies of Republican Peace: Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and the Politics of Patriotic Dissent (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
- Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent: Persecution and Survival, c.1170-c.1570 (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- Euan Cameron, Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (Wiley-Blackwell, 2001).
- J. A. Wylie, History of the Waldenses (Church History, 1985).
- Stephen L. Carter, The Dissent of the Governed: A Meditation on Law, Religion, and Loyalty (Harvard University Press, 1998).
- Richard Hoffer, Something In the Air: American Passion and Defiance in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics (Free Press, 2009): Hoffer’s “jaunty but disciplined prose puts the wind at the reader’s back and shows us how the leaps, lifts and dashes of 1968 made a significant impact on the civil rights movement and raised the political consciousness of athletes.”
- Noah Feldman, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021): “Was the Constitution Pro-Slavery? Jefferson Davis Thought So. Abraham Lincoln Didn’t.”
- Tricia Romano, The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of The Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture (Public Affairs, 2024): “The Voice defined itself against the vastly stuffier New York Times. The Times was, Whitehead says, 'the Man.'”
There is dissent within the professions:
- Nuraan Davids & Yusef Waghid, Tolerance and Dissent within Education: On Cultivating Debate and Understanding (Springer, 2017).
- William T. Lynch, Minority Report: Dissent and Diversity in Science (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).
- Lydia Reeder, The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever (St. Martin’s Press, 2024): “Womanhood itself was considered a kind of pathology; how could women claim equality if their own bodies betrayed them every month? Putnam Jacobi’s meticulously argued conclusion — that menstruation is an aspect of health, not illness — turned the prevailing wisdom upside down.”
We need not share Martin Luther’s theology to appreciate the power of his dissent.
- Eric Metaxas, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (Viking, 2017): about “a remarkable and complex man who boasted of being imperfect while insisting that he was always right.”
- Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation 1483-1521 (Fortress Press, 1985).
- Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation 1521-1532 (Fortress Press, 1991).
- Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church 1532-1546 (Augsburg Fortress Publishing, 1993).
Besides Luther, theistic religion has had its dissenters:
- Umberto Grassi, Cursed Blessings: Sex and Religious Radical Dissent in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2024).
- Elisabeth Fischer & Xenia von Tippelskirch, eds., Bodies in Early Modern Religious Dissent: Naked, Veiled, Vilified, Worshiped (Routledge, 2021).
Dissent is a form of intervention.
- Daphne Patai and Wilfrido Corral, Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent (Columbia University Press, 2005).
In the United States, it has ended wars and opened doors for oppressed peoples.
- Vasily Grossman, The Road: Stories, Journalism, and Essays (New York Review Books, 2010).
- Victoria E. Bynum, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
- Robert Mann, Wartime Dissent in America: A History and Anthology (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).
- Ralph Young, Dissent in America: The Voices that Shaped a Nation (Prentice Hall, 2008).
- Ann Wright and Susan Dickson, Dissent: Voices of Conscience (Koa Books, 2008).
- Stanley Hauerwas and Frank Lenticchia, Dissent from the Homeland: essays after September 11 (Duke University Press, 2003).
- Mary Ann Weinknoop, Dissent in the Heartland: The Sixties at Indiana University (Indiana University Press, 2002).
- David Pickering and Judy Falls, Brush Men and Vigilantes: Civil War Dissent in Texas (Texas A&M Press, 2000).
- Daphne A. Brooks, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910 (Duke University Press, 2006).
- Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2011).
- Piya Chatterjee & Sunaina Maira, eds., The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent (University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
- Sarah J. Jackson, Black Celebrity, Racial Politics, and the Press: Framing Dissent (Routledge, 2014).
- Violaine Roussel & Bleuwenn Lechaux, Voicing Dissent: American Artists and the War on Iraq (Routledge, 2010).
Dissent is written into some nations’ political systems:
- Nigel Fletcher, Institutionalised Dissent: The Official Opposition in the UK since 1935 (Routledge, 2024).
Of course, there have been great intellectual dissenters.
- Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian, Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with David Barsamian (Common Courage Press, 2002).
- Robert F. Barsky, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (MIT Press, 2007).
- Gerald Sorin, Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent (New York University Press, 2002).
All over the world, throughout history, injustice has compelled people to dissent.
- Knud Haakonssen, Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- Madawi Al-Rasheed, Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices from a New Generation (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
- Mamoun Fandy, Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent (Palgrave MacMillan, 1999).
- Cristina De Stefano, Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend (Other Press, 2017): “Someone should write an opera about her: La Fallaci, beautiful, extravagant, courageous survivor of war and tempestuous love affairs, speaker of truth to power. . . . Her interviews remain studies in speaking truth to power. Interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini, she famously called the chador a “stupid, medieval rag” and took it off, provoking the Ayatollah to leave the room.”
- Kerri K. Greenidge, Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter (Liveright, 2019): “Greenidge positions Trotter as a radical populist, distinct not only from the conservative Washington but also the progressive Du Bois.”
- Jeremy Prestholdt, Icons of Dissent: The Global Resonance of Che, Marley, Tupac and Bin Laden (Oxford University Press, 2019).
- Norman F. Cantor, The Age of Protest: Dissent and Rebellion in the Twentieth Century (Routledge, 2021).
- Alison Young, Femininity in Dissent (Routledge, 2021).
Humor can be a vehicle for dissent.
- George Carlin, Last Words (Free Press, 2009): “. . . a jazzy, inward-looking piece of work. Its strength lies in its documentation of how this great comedian made the trip from a happy-to-be-here entertainer of the 1960s to the salt-in-the-wound philosopher-comic of the 1970s and beyond.”
- David Bianculli, Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” (Touchstone / Simon & Schuster, 2010): “. . . a straightforward chronicle that charts the rise and fall of a charming double act cut down in its prime by annoyed CBS executives.”
The arts can be a vehicle for dissent.
- Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions Per Minute: From Billie Holiday to Green Day (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2011), on protest songs
- Jilly Traganou, ed., Design and Political Dissent: Spaces, Visuals, Materialities (Routledge, 2021).
Personal histories of dissent:
- Diane Johnson, The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith: And Other Lesser Lives (New York Review Books, 2020): “. . . Mary Ellen staged her mutiny, all the more astonishing at a time when divorce was unspeakable and children remained the property of their fathers. This is to say nothing of the practical hindrances of having an affair.”
- H.L. Mencken, The Days Trilogy: Expanded Edition (Library of America, 2014): collected writings from a man who bucked the crowd, and everything else
- Morgan Jerkins, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America (Harper Perennial, 2018): the author “writes about buzzworthy topics and milestones in her life . . .”: “I know that as a black woman, I am a problem. I am a contradiction of what it means to be human. … I am a stranger and I like it.”
- Ai Weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir (Crown, 2021): “For His Father and His Son, Ai Weiwei Is Determined to Leave a Trace”.
- Patrick Cockburn, Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism (Verso, 2024): “. . . Cockburn’s son, the journalist Patrick Cockburn, notes that his father demonstrated ‘how those in authority can be challenged and harassed by a determined and skillful journalist, even one almost entirely without resources.’”
- Paul Mendes-Flohr, Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale University Press, 2019).
Technical and Analytical Readings
- Tony Milligan, The Ethics of Political Dissent (Routledge, 2022).
- Freeman Dyson, The Scientist As Rebel (New York Review Books, 2006).
- Timothy Zick, Managed Dissent (Cambridge University Press, ).
- Tamara Caraus & Camil Alexandru Parvu, eds., Cosmopolitanism and the Legacies of Dissent (Routledge, 2014).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- Winter Soldier: Vietnam war veterans speak out, during the war, about atrocities they had witnessed
- 5 Broken Cameras: a “chronicle of protest and endurance” focusing on the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the small Palestinian village of Bil’in
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Magda Szabó, Abigail: A Novel (1970): “Even as the students are fostering a culture of quiet dissent within the academy, an anonymous political insurgent is papering Arkod with anti-Nazi signage.”
- Wang Xiaobo, Golden Age: A Novel (Astra House, 2022): “Sex Confessions and Protest From a Disillusioned Communist”.
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Dmitri Shostakovich was a dissident composer in the truest sense of the word. As a Soviet citizen under Stalin and then Kruschev, he faced intense pressure to compose music that pleased state officials, and more pressingly perhaps, not to compose music that displeased them. Keenly aware of the atrocities within the Soviet system, Shostakovich was driven to compose the music that spoke truth as he saw it. Several of his works reflect this drive, which gained expression during periods when he was able to resist pressure from the state. They constitute a forbidden critique of Soviet government and culture.
- Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47 (1937) (approx. 40-51’), in which Shostakovich subtly mocks the state’s glory. “In the 1930s, the Soviet Union reeled under the purges of Joseph Stalin. Every person knew the terror of losing a family member to the gulag, or to a death sentence. Official government decrees defined truth and beauty. Traditional composers were declared decadent and their music forbidden. Only Beethoven survived the ban. In this environment Dmitri Shostakovich, the greatest Soviet composer, found himself heavily scrutinized.” After being criticized in state-run media, “he attempted to make amends not with a patriotic cantata or a sycophantic ode, but with a symphony, that most formalist of forms, always a mystery to Soviet policymakers, since a symphony without words is not specifically supportive of the regime. The Fifth Symphony, first performed in November 1937, was received with huge enthusiasm and relief since it possessed all the qualities needed to rehabilitate the composer: a simple and direct musical language, extended well-shaped melodies, and, above all, a positive fanfare at the end, erasing all shadows and doubts.” The San Francisco Symphony has created a documentary and concert. Top recorded performances are conducted by Rodzinski in 1942, Bernstein in 1959, Ormandy in 1965, Previn in 1965, Kondrashin in 1980, Kurt Sanderling in 1982, Mravinsky in 1982, Maxim Shostakovich in 1990, Vasily Petrenko in 2008, Shani in 2021, and Mäkelä in 2024.
- Shostakovich intended his Symphony No. 9 (1945) (approx. 27-29’) to deflate Stalin’s ego and speak out for persecuted Jews. “With his Ninth Symphony, Shostakovich challenged the notion of praising the Soviet Union for its military victory, instead mocking the anti-Semitic martial state of Stalinist Soviet Union and using the platform of a Ninth Symphony to celebrate the Soviet Union’s victory of the Great Patriotic War to be a voice for prosecuted Jewish people within the Soviet Union.” “. . . Shostakovich dreamed up a subversive neo-Classical construction which cocked a snook at the cult of the leader. At 25 minutes it ends abruptly, with no apotheosis. After the premiere, the piece was not performed again until after Stalin’s death.” Performances are conducted by Gergiev, Rozhdestvensky, and Bernstein.
- String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 (1960) (approx. 19-23’), portrays the composer as a victim of fascism. Performances are by Borodin Quartet, Beethoven Quartet in 1960, Emerson String Quartet in 1999, Talich Quartet in 2001, Hagen Quartett in 2006, Pacifica Quartet in 2011, Simón Bolívar String Quartet in 2011, and Valentin Berlinsky Quartet in 2012.
- From Jewish Folk Poetry, Op. 79 (1948) (approx. 24-25’): “The first eight of the Jewish songs were written when Shostakovich was plunged into artistic exile by being stripped of all his teaching posts under the Stalinist regime. They deal with the suffering and longings of a “homeless people”, whereas the last three songs, composed some years later, deal with the achievement of happiness.” Performances are with Shostakovich on piano, Södrström singing, and Polyansky conducting.
- Anti-Formalist Rayok (1960) (approx. 20-28’) is a musical satire on the USSR’s treatment of composers and their music. Performances are conducted by Platonov, Leiferkus and Spivakov.
- Satires (Pictures of the Past), Op. 109 (1960) (approx. 13-20’), on ideology
- Michelangelo Verses (1974) (approx. 40-49’) (lyrics) is a commentary on Solzhenitsyn’s exile from the USSR, among other interpretations of the work. “Shostakovich arranged his chosen texts from Michelangelo (translated into Russian) into a cycle of ten songs, with an eleventh hanging at the end, like a leaf about to fall from the tree.” Performances are sung by Nesterenko, Hvorostovsky and Abdrazakov.
- Shostakovich also used humor and irony, such as in his Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra, Op. 35 (1933) (approx. 23-35’), and his Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 102 (1957) (approx. 17-19’). These works create musical images of Soviet citizens rushing about frenetically, surrounded by military themes and rhythms.
The group Stick in the Wheel cuts its own musical path: “. . . their music has always tilted at a forceful, thrilling kind of modernism, something rooted in their own London locality but whose message is entirely universal. Their songs ring with the joy of specificity and detail, the ferocious joy of marginalised voices making themselves heard, the angry joy of people reclaiming their heritage.” “Stick in the Wheel are Cockney East London folk musicians with more than a whiff of the punk about them. And by ‘punk’ I mean the DIY spirit and spit-in-your-eye attitude behind punk.” Here is a link to their releases. Their albums include:
- “A Thousand Pokes” (2024) (42’) “is a satirical celebration of mistakes. A joyous lambasting of everyone and everything that’s wrong in the world, against the real-time backdrop of global uncertainty, corruption and political unrest.”
- “Perspectives on Tradition” (2022) (31’): “. . . the project encouraged musicians from a largely un-folk background to respond to the historical documents they found in the archive. . . . The intention of this collaboration was to capture whatever frisson might occur when these musicians shook off the dust and viewed the material from their own artistic sensibilities.”
- “Tonebeds for Poetry” (2021) (35’): “. . . the album is presented as a mixtape. In this way, they toy with the idea of musical lineages. It’s not so much a renunciation of pigeonholes as a celebration of otherness.”
- “Hold Fast” (2020) (41’): on this album, “they are more searingly honest and politically charged than ever, while their music retains all the DIY energy that made them such a refreshing addition to the music scene.”
- “Follow Them True” (2018) (37’): “. . . establishes the band as more than a shock to the system, but a band with a singular vision. It’s not that they don’t respect folk and the music of these isles, they’re just determined to do it their way.”
- “From Here” (2015) (46’): the performers “have somehow managed to combine all of these influences – skiffle, punk, and folk – to create From Here, a timely and immensely rewarding debut album.”
Other albums:
- The Brother Moves On, “Tolika Mtoliki" (Interpret Interpreter) (2021) (37’): “This is musicians seeking and speaking truth to power . . .”
- WITCH, “Zango” (2023) (42’): the name of this Zambian group stands for We Intend to Cause Havoc. The group focuses on eliminating homophobia and xenophobia.
- Hypercube, “Brain on Fire” (2020) (62’): “In under nails, scrapes, descending glissandi, and brief, cartoonish scale bursts are occasionally interrupted by ominous fragments of death metal vocals. As the piece progresses the elements become more integrated as Sullivan glues them together into hybrid instrumental gestures. Just before the six minute mark, the piece returns to the primordial scratching sound world heard in the opening, now heard as a sustained texture.”
From the dark side:
- Kurt Weill, Der Jasager (He Who Says Yes) (1930) (approx. 64’) (libretto): The dark side of dissent is not having the freedom to do it.
Music: songs and other short pieces
- The Clash, "London Calling" (lyrics)
- Blaise Siwula, Nicolas Letman-Burtinovic & Jon Panikkar, “Dissension”
Visual Arts
Film and Stage
- Ju Dou: a Chinesewoman challenges tradition in the 1920s
- The Angry Silence, about a worker who opposes the union at his workplace
- Butcher Boy, about “a boy’s struggles with violence and mental illness,” the film maintains the protagonist’s “wily, headstrong voice through all his tumultuous experiences” and his cultivated ability “to attack the status quo with extreme prejudice”
- The Conformist(Il conformista), about a man who went along at all costs to others
- Silkwood, on the price of dissent and the resistance against it
- Kabei: Our Mother, a Japanese film set in the early 1940s chronicling the price a family pays for the husband/father’s implicit criticism of Japanese war policies
- To Be or Not to Be, celebrating the Polish resistance during World War II
- Jafar Panahi’s Taxi, a quirky film by an Iranian film-maker, who creates a film while driving a taxicab, using non-professional actors, who appear anonymously, while the film-maker supposedly is under house arrest